Rahpooye Honar-Ha-Ye Tajassomi

Rahpooye Honar-Ha-Ye Tajassomi

The study of specifications of zodiacs illustrations of Suwar al-kawakib book (the national library of Iran) .

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 MA of Visual Communication, Department of Graphics, Faculty of Art, Soore University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Communication, Lahijan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran.
Abstract
Navigating and time determination by using stars has an ancient history. The appearance and improvement of astrology and recording the information about stars precisely leaded to transferring and expansion of it. Scientists and astrologists use this knowledge to design different calendars to exactly calculate the time and events. The duty of the astrology is to study the movements, structure, evolution and destiny of Celestial Objects and to answer to human’s questions about the universe and its quiddity. A lot of ancient and stone age historic monuments are influenced by these astrological studies and the improvement of it. This science had a particularly huge impact on deigning the tombs and temples. After Greeks, muslin scientists had an important role in improvement of astrology because in Islamic rules it was necessary to precisely calculate the time and places for daily and monthly praying rituals and the direction of quiblah to build mosques. Discovering how to find the Cardinal Directions, North, South, East and West and using the Pole Star to determine latitudes are the most important achievements of ancient astrologist. There are so many books written about this subject and one of the most important ones is Suwar al-Kiwakib written by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in 4th Century AH and was transcribed repeatedly over years. This book is the corrected version of Batlamius’s Almagest book and it was the original source of information and image for centuries. Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi could record the coordinates of 1027 stars which could be seen with naked eye and divide them into 48 Constellations. He also could discover the Andromeda nebula. This version belongs to one of the richest and most beautiful schools of persian miniature, the Herat school, in the Timurid era. The layout and writings elements of this book follow a relatively specific grid. The writings’ layouts, tables and pictures in this book are designed in nine different types. In this book the exact position of stars and the intensity of their brightness are precisely recorded in tables beside the pictures of the way they are exactly being seen in the sky and the form they have on the celestial globe. 12 constellations out of 48 constellations shown in this book belong to zodiac belt. The zodiac belt is divided into twelve equal parts which includes twelve constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. The study of these contellations’ origins had shown that in each civilization, culture and land there were a different belief about each of them. But in whole these belives can be divided into four groups: each constellation represents a symbol of a person’s characteristics like braveness, agility, happiness and etc. Each constellation is a symbol of an action or event such as mediation, progress and interactions. Each constellation is the symbol of a God or Goddess like: Goddess Inana, the goddess of love and fertility. In the alst category each constellation in the symbol of a legendary character or a part of the mythical narrations. Like Heraclius, Izis and Iziris. During the years each one of these four categories has been changed depending on the era and civilization in every country and continued to live on. Scientists and astrologists used astrology to design different calendars to calculate time and events precisely. Thus the main goal of this research is The Study of Specifications of Zodiacs Illustrations from Suwar al-kawakib Book stored in national library of Iran with access code 5-16269. This version has 180 pages in size of 24x16.6 centimeters and is written in 871 AH and it is in Arabic. Sampling method of this research is Selective Statistical Society and the method used to gather information is documentary analysis by using available resources in the library, visiting the library directly and online resources. This research is functional and has used qualitative data. Also the Descriptive-analytical method is used to analyze data. The importance and necessity of this research is to introduce and investigate a version of Suwar al-kawakib which was not in the center of attention before. Thus it can make a suitable background for future researchers who are going to use it for their studies. The results have shown that however this book had been transcribed so many time over years, some specific principles had always been unchanged in redesigning and according to the art of each historical era, some parts of the book had been changed. The main specifications of this version are the usage of line-drawings, dilute colors, limited decorations and natural proportions in drawing pictures and avoiding unusual exaggerations in Human figures. The animal Zodiacs are considered as important as the human Zodiacs. Also in this version the specific principles of writing styles and illustration of scientific books has been followed.
Keywords

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Volume 7, Issue 3
Autumn 2024
Pages 65-75

  • Receive Date 24 January 2024
  • Revise Date 23 March 0621
  • Accept Date 01 May 2024